Lady Gaga has just been named artist of the year by Billboard! I couldn’t agree more—I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: 2010 is the year Gaga really came into her own.


2008-09 were more about her music. This year the public kind of realized that Gaga is a state of mind. What’s funny is that Billboard named Gaga the top new artist in 2009. And just one year later, she’s receiving these honors.


According to the mag, the last woman to graduate so quickly was Whitney Houston in 1985-86. Let’s just hope Gaga’s future looks a little brighter….


From the mag…


Gaga takes the artist of the year honor thanks in part to the chart performance of her first two albums, "The Fame" and "The Fame Monster" (both on Streamline/KonLive/Cherrytree/Interscope), which rank at Nos. 4 and 13, respectively, on the year-end Top Billboard 200 Albums tally. Four singles from those albums appear on the Hot 100 Songs roundup, led by "Bad Romance" at No. 8.


For top new act of the year, Billboard chose Ke$ha, which I’m sure a lot of people don’t agree with. But if you think about it, these choices were probably made a couple months ago, prior to Nicki Minaj, Willow Smith and Bruno Mars really blowing up.


Plus, Ke$ha’s hit song “TiK ToK” spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the weekly Hot 100 list. But remember, she owes it all to Flo Rida, who put her on that track “Right Round.” Without that, we wouldn’t be wakin up in the morning with a bottle of Jack!